WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of
the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for
the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda
and Saddam Hussein. …

So?

The president
says there is a link, sort of, really.The vice president says there is, and
attacks the Times as irresponsible.The Times editorializes that Bush
and Cheney should apologize.Bush and Cheney say the Times should apologize.

Classic he said, she
said stuff.Yawn.

To be clear, the commission's report does not, really,
have anything to do with whether or not we should have gone to war in Iraq.That
wasn’t what they were up to.And is there a contradiction?It is not true that these findings really do contradict what Bush and Cheney said, literally, about Al
Qaeda and Iraq.And Bush is carefully saying that he does NOT dispute the findings
of the commission.

The problem is with what is said literally, and what is implied.

On his Thursday
broadcast Jon Stewart on his satiric “newscast” The Daily Show did run the clip of Bush saying,
"You can't distinguish between Iraq and Al Qaeda when you're talking about the War on Terror."And Stewart made great fun of that.

But Bush was speaking of the big picture, the moral “good
and evil” overview, not the details.The idea is Saddam Hussein did not,
of course, have anything to do with the four hijacked airplanes and that whole really bad day almost three years ago.But he was still bad.He was, sort of,
one of THEM.Sort of.“We
never said that Saddam specifically….”

I wish there were a pithy, catchy way to say it, because it's important: George W. Bush and his administration used
certain rhetorical and syntactical techniques to convince Americans that a war against Saddam was connected to 9-11, and they
do not have the right to complain now when those same techniques imply that they are lying, manipulative bastards.

…
The folks in this administration were careful in the way they constructed their talking points prior to the war.I've always thought that each mention of Iraq in relation to the WoT was vetted in anticipation of a situation
like this week's.

… The evidence of their intent is in the result of their efforts: a majority of Americans
have believed that Saddam had something to do with 9-11.

Well, not only did he not have anything to do with 9-11,
he really had very little to do with Al Qaeda beyond a meeting here, or an overture there.But now, suddenly, Bushco wants to go back and parse their sentences and say, "See? See? We didn't really say that."

Well, shut up. You made the rules, and if you're getting your asses kicked now, it's your own damn fault.

Well, the situation is
a little awkward.Perhaps we all should have listened more carefully.

There
were connections, a few meetings and such, and Iraq never really did anything for Al Qaeda in the end, but, but, they MIGHT
have.

On the one hand, the administration, in the past, suggested that Iraq was behind 9-11.Currently, they aren't doing that, but they are "overstat[ing]" the extent of Saddam/Qaeda links and keeping
stories alive "long after others in the government thought [them] discredited."The
result of all this is "to keep alive in the minds of many Americans a link between Iraq and the attacks" which… was
put there by the administration in the first place.

The administration, in other words, is trying to mislead people
into ignoring the difference between being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and not being responsible
for those deaths.The administration's accusers, by contrast, are trying to mislead
people into ignoring the distinction between misleading the public about this (after lying to them), and lying to the
public.On what planet is the latter "almost" as irresponsible as the former?
One is a question of life and death -- war and peace -- and the other is semantic hair-splitting.

Oh man, that just makes
my head hurt.I’m supposed to understand the distinction between lying
about something and then misleading everyone, which is somehow different that just lying, and not so bad?What?

And Yglesias knows he’s being unclear – and links to David Adesnik saying something much simpler:

David Adesnik remarks that my theory that the administration's weirdly nonsensical discourse on
the Iraq/Qaeda connection is designed to mislead people while protecting them from elite media criticism that it has not,
in fact, protected them from such criticism. Rather, his "best guess is that Bush himself (along with Cheney) is deeply
in denial.It's the same phenomenon we saw with Reagan.When you believe in something with all your heart and then stake your reputation on it, letting go is the
hardest thing to do."

Yep, that’s right.

And if Bush wants to be associated with the dead Reagan, he should remind people he’s as good at denying reality
as the Gipper ever was.Folks find that comforting.You stay the course, in spite of everything.Sunny optimism
or early onset Alzheimer’s.Whatever.

It was Ronald Reagan who
famously said, "Facts are stupid things."He said that in 1988, and probably
was confusing it with - "Facts are stubborn things."But who needs details?You get the general idea.Sort of.

So,
it comes down to who are you going to trust?As the old Groucho Marx line goes,
“Who are you going to trust – me or your own eyes?”

___

The week started out with
much better stories.

Last Sunday evening, switching
between the restored version of Frank Capra’s 1937 “Lost Horizon” (all two and a half hours of it) on the
classic movie channel and the news I saw the Washington Post had just posted the memo they reported on a few days earlier.This one is the one from Alberto Gonzales, the lawyer who advises Bush – the
White House Counsel – to the CIA.It is the White House saying to the CIA
– “Torture folks? No problem. Go for it!”

Say, do you remember when the New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers – all that internal
policy stuff we weren’t supposed to ever see about the Vietnam War?The
New York Times used its newspaper to provide the full transcripts of those Pentagon Papers.The Post is using the web.Whatever.

Here we
go again.We can read what we are really not supposed to read.The free press doing its job?Treason?Depends on your political leanings.

Well, the memo is not from Bush himself, only his lawyer, his
legal spokesman, his Justice Department, so Bush himself can claim he, himself, would never advise such a thing.He can claim Alberto was acting on his own initiative and really should have discussed the memo with him
before Al sent it over to the CIA.Bush would have known this would be trouble.Bush could say that.

Delegation has its risks.Sometimes your subordinates do things that just aren’t good.

We shall see how this plays out.In one of my previous careers I was a boss – a Senior Systems Manager, no less. One, of necessity, delegates.You trust your guys.And when things go in the weeds, as they sometimes do when you delegate, well, you suck it up, repair the
damage, and go on.

Today washingtonpost.com is posting a copy of the Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum "Re: Standards of Conduct
for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A," from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto R. Gonzales,
counsel to President Bush.

The memo was written at the request of the CIA.The
CIA wanted authority to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001.The interrogations were of suspected al Qaeda members whom the CIA
had apprehended outside the United States.The CIA asked the White House for
legal guidance.The White House asked Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel
for its legal opinion on the standards of conduct under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading
Treatment or Punishment.

The Office of Legal Counsel is the federal government's ultimate legal adviser.The most significant and sensitive topics that the federal government considers are often given to the
OLC for review.In this case, the memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, the
head of the office at the time.Bybee's signature gives the document additional
authority, making it akin to a binding legal opinion on government policy on interrogations.Bybee has since become a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Another memorandum, dated
March 6, 2003, from a Defense Department working group convened by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to come up with new
interrogation guidelines for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, incorporated much, but not all, of the legal thinking from
the OLC memo.The Wall Street Journal first published the March memo.

At
a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senators asked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to release both memos.Ashcroft said he would not discuss the contents of the Justice and Pentagon memos
or turn them over to the committees.A transcript of that hearing is also available.

President Bush spoke on the issue of torture Thursday, saying he expected U.S.
authorities to abide by the law.He declined to say whether he believes U.S.
law prohibits torture.Here is a link to the White House transcript of the president's press conference, which included questions and answers on torture. …

Well, the cat is out of
the bag.

This on the heels of US News and World Report, in their June 21 issue revealing that our top officer in Iraq, General Richard Sanchez was directly involved in hiding prisoners from the Red Cross.

Well,
that explains why John Abizaid, the CENTCOM commander, is planning to appoint a four star general to head up the
Army's investigation of this mess, as the New York Timesreports.

General Abizaid's request, which defense officials said Mr. Rumsfeld would most likely approve,
was set in motion in the last week when the current investigating officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, told his superiors that
he could not complete his inquiry without interviewing more senior-ranking officers, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez,
the ground commander in Iraq.

But Army regulations prevent General Fay, a two-star general, from interviewing higher-ranking
officers.So General Sanchez took the unusual step of asking to be removed as
the reviewing authority for General Fay's report, and requesting that higher-ranking officers be appointed to conduct and
review the investigation.

Fay has to go.He only has two stars.Sanchez has three.A two star cannot investigate a three star.

A few bad apples indeed.

And there are lots
of indications that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal
have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.First notice here.

And add this – another “Oops, sorry.”The New
York Times tells us here that at the start of the Iraq war we “launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi
leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian
casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.”

Now they tell is.

It just
keeps getting better all the time.

And the Los Angeles Times was reporting that a group of twenty-six former senior diplomats and military officials, a number of them appointed to key positions by
Republican Reagan and Bush’s father, planned to issue a joint statement on Wednesday arguing that this President Bush
has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.And
they did.This would be twenty former ambassadors - appointed by presidents of
both parties - to places like Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.And
some retired State Department guys.The organizer is retired Marine general Joseph
Hoar, and he was the commander of US forces in the Middle East under Bush's daddy.